Worms to Catch

by Guy Martin

  Top fuel cars are fitted with aluminium conrods. To light the fuel they use spark and detonation (by that I mean the mixture explodes purely under pressure – it’s ‘pinking’, which is bad for a regular engine). There is so much fuel in the combustion chamber that these motors are on the verge of hydraulic locking when they’re at top dead centre. The piston compresses the mixture, but because it’s almost liquid it can only compress it so much, unlike the more gaseous cloud of air and petrol in the regular engine. The aluminium conrods are chosen, instead of steel or titanium conrods, because the alloy acts as a shock absorber.

  I’ve gone off track here. Mattias, who I bought the Amazon from, built it to run on E85, and I’ve left it how he built it. I could change the ignition timing and run less boost, so it could run on super unleaded, but it would run too hot. I’ll just keep using loads of the really expensive fuel when I use the Amazon. The car is good for having a mad half-hour every now and then, but I’m not interested in taking it on track days or anything like that.

  I don’t know what it is about me and Swedish vehicles, Scanias, Volvos, Saabs … They all do a squillion miles, they’re proper built things and I’ve ended up with another old Volvo, a 1965 P1800. I never thought about these until I bought the Amazon. In Mattias’s shed was a P1800 that had a more modern T5 engine in it and nice wheels. When I got home I started looking at P1800s. Everyone associates them with the 1960s Roger Moore spy programme, The Saint, but I’d never seen it. At the back of my mind was the thought that I’d like a good usable one. Bill Gordon from Red Torpedo, the clothing company that has been sponsoring me for years, visited me and I took him out in the Amazon, and when we got back he asked if I’d rather have a P1800 than the money his company owed me. Spellman found a dead tidy blue one that had been restored years ago. It’s one of the last ones running on carbs. The later ones were fuel-injected, and I don’t want anything with 1960s fuel injection.

  Somehow, I also ended up with a knackered Mk3 Volkswagen Polo. I met Mad Adrian in the early days of racing the TT, when he and his mate would ride over from Manchester on their mopeds. He’s a good lad. He started working at Dounreay nuclear power station, and he was travelling back to Manchester every weekend. The Polo was his only transport, and when it shit itself I lent him the money so he could buy a Golf from my mate Jim Andrews, a car dealer. Mad Adrian ended up giving me his knackered Polo instead of paying me interest on the loan. It sat outside my house for over a year upsetting the neighbours. I had a mad idea that I’d leave it looking rough, but fit a Powertec V8 in it, one of those engines Radical use that’s made from one-and-a-half Hayabusas, but I never did.

  When Sharon moved over from Ireland she needed a car, so I thought I’d get the Polo running. I bought an engine from Hector Neill, the owner of the TAS BMW team (TAS stands for Temple Auto Salvage), and brought it home in my van from the 2015 North West 200. A few months later I was supposed to be doing a thing at a show with Dainese, but the flights got cancelled or summat and I ended up back home at dinnertime with no plans, so I decided to fit the replacement engine in the Polo. I borrowed an engine hoist from a garage down the road and took one driveshaft off, so I could disconnect the gearbox and move it round to the side to get the engine out. I swapped it on the driveway. Eventually, Sharon got fed up with the Polo’s doors not locking, and even though it had just passed its MOT, she wanted something newer, so I bought a Land Rover Defender 90 for her. I’d always liked them, but I never drive it because I’m always in the Transit.

  Another car I’ve ended up with more recently was bought from Uncle Rodders (who isn’t my uncle). He owned a 1975 Pontiac Firebird for 15 or 20 years, and I’d always seen it in his shed when I called round there. He’s helped me out loads over the years, so I said to him, ‘Let me have that Pontiac and I’ll get it finished for you.’ He came back to me and said, ‘Thanks, but you won’t do it like I’d want.’ He wanted it rat-look, but I didn’t want to do it like that, so he sold me it for £1,800 and it’s become a future project. The goal of that Firebird is to scare me more than the Amazon does. I’ve never had the horizon coming towards me as fast as it seems to when I’m driving that Volvo, and that includes riding a Superbike at the Isle of Man. So I want 2,000 horsepower out of the Firebird. You can put a Chevy LS1 V8 in them. That’s a big cc, pushrod V8, and I’d put a supercharger on it. I think I want the supercharger poking so high through the bonnet that you can hardly see past it, but I’ll decide on that when I get my eye in on the job. At the moment I’m thinking stripped-out interior: roll cage; driver’s seat; big eff-off rev counter; big eff-off oil light; temperature gauge. A bit Death Proof.

  Before the Firebird I might have to finish another big project I’ve just landed myself with. Mark Walker, who was one of the founders of Martek and was asked to be the technical advisor on my wall of death bike, bought a Ford Escort RS Cosworth years ago, the one with the whale tail on it. Then he cut it up to make a P100-style pick-up. Cosworths have always been worth a lot, so I don’t know what made him do it, but I like his style. Mark had space-framed the whole chassis, but like Uncle Rodders, it was a case of, ‘It’ll be done next year, it’ll be done next year …’ Finally, he admitted he’ll never finish it, and he was looking to get rid of it. I’d known about it for years and saw there was a deal to be done, so I had it. It’s a bare shell, no engine, no interior. I think I’m going to put an EcoBoost V6, the same engine as the Transit, in it.

  Talking of Transits, I have the Transit Custom, FT13 AFK, which I raced in Nevada, but we’ve covered that. I also have the grey Transit L2 H2 that I ended up with in a deal with Ford for going to a couple of their events. That’s the vehicle I use the most.

  I haven’t finished yet. I bought a Fendt tractor, because I liked the idea of having a finger in another pie. I chose the German tractor because all the boys round here had said it was the Rolls-Royce of the farm world, and I’m sure they are a fantastic tractor, but I take as I find, and I had nothing but trouble with mine. In the year I had the Fendt, Tim Coles drove it for us during the day and I did odd nights in it, while it was used for shit-spreading on local farms. Sharon didn’t show any signs of being keen to do that.

  I wanted rid of it, and I lost a few quid when I traded it in, but it had worked hard for a year. I replaced it with the John Deere 7310R. The John Deere and the Fendt are both big tractors, and you need a lot of horsepower for the shit-spreading job, because you’ve got nearly 40 tons to shift: 11 or 12 tons of tractor, 8 tons of trailer and then 15 tons of shit on board, plus you need a lot of power to run the dribble bar.

  The Fendt did a bit of leading work, when it was wheat and barley harvest time, towing a trailer to transport the harvest from the combine to the grain stores. It did some silage work, too, but the Fendt was a monster, and it couldn’t go on the tatie job. Whatever wheels we thought about putting on it, we couldn’t get it to fit between the rows of potatoes, which are planted in rows at set widths, so the tractor was missing out on some good work. A local potato firm rents a tractor every year for drilling the seeds, and the John Deere is suitable, so I’m hoping it will pick up that work too.

  The John Deere is an ex-demo 2016 model and it pays for itself, pays Tim a wage and earns a quid or two on top, and I always had a soft spot for John Deere stuff. I’ll always have the truck job, but there’ll come a day when the TV job dries up, and I don’t want all my eggs in one basket. When that happens I’ll be alright. If you need me, I’ll be shit-spreading.

  Motorbikes … I mentioned the old AR50 I used to go to work on as an apprentice. The other bike I’ve owned for years, on and off, is a 2004 Suzuki GSX-R1000. It’s the last road race bike I owned myself, until 2015, because after that I was riding for teams and using their bikes. I came seventh in the Isle of Man Senior TT in my first ever year on this Suzuki, and it is the bike Uncle Rodders cast a new subframe for so I could get the riding position I wanted. A few years ago Spellman tracked it down and bought it as a surprise for me, bec
ause he knew it was the race bike that meant the most to me. He wouldn’t tell me how much he paid for it, so that means whoever sold him it had his eye out, but Spellman said it wasn’t about the money. It has the original fairings, but the wrong brakes on it now, so I want to put it back to how it was when I had it when I get time.

  Another road race bike I have is the Smiths Triumph 675. I bought it in 2015 to go racing on. I needed a Supersport bike because when TAS swapped from Suzuki to BMW they didn’t have one for me to race, as BMW don’t build one. I bought this trick Triumph and only used it for one practice session at the Ulster before the crash made me have a rethink about road racing.

  As part of the deal with Smiths I also got a standard road-legal Triumph Daytona 675R Carbon Edition. It’s brand new, without a mile on it. I have no interest in it as it is, and I don’t know what to do with it. Nik, the marketing man from Triumph whose idea it was for me to ride the land speed record streamliner, reckons I should store it as an investment. It might be a Nürburgring test machine.

  I’ve got the wall of death Rob North and the Bimota VDue I wrote about in When You Dead, You Dead. It’s a fuel-injected 500 cc two-stroke V-twin. I loved the idea of it, but it’s shit. Oh, and the Pikes Peak Martek and the dirt trackers I mentioned in the Dirt Quake chapter. There’s a Harley, too, a real rare-looking thing I bought from Andy Spellman. When it comes to bikes he wants to get on and ride it, whereas custom bikes need a lot of looking after and fettling. You can’t leave them for a month and expect them to be perfect, like you can a modern stock bike. You’ve got to check the oil and keep on top of them. Spellman’s a very clever man, very good with cameras, but he didn’t know how to check the oil on this Harley, so buying it was more of a mercy mission. It was like seeing a pit bull tied up in a garden, unloved and neglected. I had to give it a good home, but it’s not for me. I went out on it once and it nearly put me off motorbikes. There are so many trick bits on it, but it’s bloody noisy and the riding position is all wrong for me.

  My latest bike is a 1988 Yamaha TZR250 Reverse Cylinder that I bought off Stewart, one of Moody’s drivers, who needed some money in a hurry. It’s a trick thing and rare. They were never officially imported into Britain. It’s far from mint, but it’s original. I’ve got the standard pipes for it. It makes 65 horsepower, so it’s quick and sounds the bollocks. I don’t know when I’m ever going to use it, though.

  That’s it for motorbikes, but my Rolls-Royce Spitfire engine is up in the Grampian Transport Museum, who are mates of Francis Dungait, my mountain-bike mate who I wrote about in When You Dead, You Dead, after he shocked me and Sal by smacking Nigel the dog on his snout. Chris Kelly of Keltruck wanted a sticker on my helmet years ago, and I swapped it for a Scania 144 530 V8 engine. It looks like a complete engine, but it’s a show motor with no valve gear in it. The Scania V8 is famous in the world I’m in, and they put the V8 logo on everything, they’re that proud of it. The engine just sat in a corner at Moody’s, but I’m keeping it because I’ve worked on them since I was 12 years old.

  Lawnmowers are another thing that I’ve ended up with loads of. I have a brand new Hayter for my grass at home, because my lawn is rubbish, and I’ve got an old Atco, from the early seventies, unrestored, electric start with a bowling green roller on it. It’s a nice old lawnmower. And I swapped a turbo trainer for another nice Atco, from the 1950s. I just like them.

  Bicycles are something else again. I’m building a steel-framed Rourke with Shimano Di2 electronic gear shifters, all the Hope bits, Fox suspension. I have another Rourke, a single-speed, which I ride to work on. The land-speed bike and the Salsa Fargo Tour Divide bike are both on display in my mate’s bike shop.

  I have a lot of bikes made by the British company Orange. In some sort of order I have: 322 downhill bike; Clockwork hardtail; 29-inch Gyro 24-hour race bike; Five mountain bike; Alpine 160 26-inch that Hope gave me; new Alpine 160 with Di2 electronic gear set on it; RX9 cyclocross bike and Carb-O carbon road bike, but I’ve loaned it to a young lad, Ben Neave, Tim and Tom’s little brother, to ride. And that’s it.

  I look at the list of stuff I’ve got and wonder, How have I ended up with all this? I don’t need it, I know that, but I like all this shit.

  CHAPTER 17

  I felt sorry for him, because I stunk the day I met him

  NEVER HAS SO much piss been sent into the wind. Trying to break the world record for human-powered watercraft was another project for the 2016 Speed series. The series was four programmes long and split down the middle, half human-powered, me being the human, and half involving big turbo engines.

  The record we were chasing belongs to Mark Drela from the American university MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His speed was 18.5 knots, the equivalent of 21.3 mph. It doesn’t sound that fast, does it? But Drela is not a messer. He’s a professor specialising in the aeronautical and astronautical side of things, with a bit of fluid dynamics chucked in for good measure.

  I looked him up, and the MIT’s website has a page on him describing what he’s up to. Here’s a bit of it: ‘Current research involves development of computational algorithms for the prediction of 2D and 3D external flows about aerodynamic bodies. Subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flow regimes are being considered. Most of the work centers on viscous/inviscid coupling schemes in conjunction with direct Newton solution methods. Two- and three-dimensional integral boundary layer formulations are also being developed for modeling viscous regions.’

  Exactly. But we had some brains involved in our attempt too. Lincoln University had set their students a project to design a potential record breaker, and they’d got in touch with North One to see if there was any interest in working together. One of Lincoln’s professors, Ron Bickerton, was our main contact. He’s in his sixties, with a long grey ponytail, and lives on a boat when he’s working at the university.

  For the first day of filming, we met on Ron’s boat at Burton Waters, near Lincoln. He told us what the students had been up to and showed us footage of the current record being set.

  When I thought of human-powered watercraft, I pictured a swan pedalo on a boating lake. And it sounded like what we were doing was building a glorified pedalo. I hadn’t had that much experience with pedalos, but I’d had enough. I’d hired one in Croatia once. It had a slide on the front. It was trick.

  Mark Drela’s record breaker was called the Decavitator, and it was a pedal-powered watercraft with a big propeller on the back like one of those airboats they have in the swamps of Florida. The YouTube clip of it in action didn’t look that impressive, initially, then I kept watching it and realised that Drela, who was not only the designer, but was also pedalling it, was licking on.

  Ron was the driving force of our project. He explained that he had this man involved, and that man doing this, and that the students had all these great ideas. As time went on I got the feeling they were full of great ideas and big words, but after a while it seemed to me that next to bugger all was actually happening. I’d had involvement with universities before in the previous Speed series, and the ones that stand out the most are the projects we’d done with Sheffield Hallam University, brilliant stuff like the gravity racer, which did 85.61 mph down Mont Ventoux (before Brian the Chimp had a furry hand in crashing it) and the 83.49 mph sledge. I felt the Lincoln side fell down when it actually came to turning the great words that were falling out of their mouths into action.

  The Speed programmes often involve some sort of sports science along with the engineering challenges, and this one was no different. As part of the programme I visited Lincoln University to do a load of dyno tests on a static exercise bike, linked up to a load of monitors. We wanted to make sure I could put out the wattage they reckoned we needed to produce for the machine to break the record.

  Another thing North One are good at doing is getting high-profile experts to give me some advice. For this programme we had a couple of knights who have won ten Olympic gold medals between them. First,
I had a day with Sir Chris Hoy in Lincoln University, then I went sailing with Sir Ben Ainslie. The cycling legend was brought in to suggest some training for a bit of TV bullshit, and what a lovely bloke. I felt a bit sorry for him, because I stunk the day I met him. I was training for the Tour Divide, and I’d set off at daft o’clock in the morning to cycle the long way to meet him at Lincoln University. I hadn’t had a proper wash for three days. I don’t get washed that often if I’m at work – what’s the point if I’m not that caked up? And I was wearing waterproofs, so it was a bit boil-in-the-bag. I could even smell myself, so it must have been bad. He didn’t say anything, though, because he’s a polite man.

  It was worked out how many watts I theoretically needed to put out and for how long to have a crack at breaking the record. I did manage to make enough power, and for long enough, in the lab tests, and during the day Chris Hoy came out with some interesting stuff that wasn’t really anything to do with the programme. He explained that he was never a natural, and that kids who are thought of as naturals at school age are often winning mainly because they’re bigger and stronger, having developed earlier than most of their competition. These kids get used to winning, but when the other kids’ physiques build and strength increases, they catch up, the ‘natural’ kids start losing more than they win, and that’s when they pack in. Chris said he had to work at it, and he reckons it’s the kids who never had success, the ones who it didn’t come easy for, but they kept working at it, who are the ones to put your money on. He was one of them.

  He’s the same height as me, but he’s a much bigger build, even though he said he’d lost 4 kilograms, over half a stone, since he retired from racing. He gave me some interval training tips to increase my maximum power, but nothing that would help me with endurance. I think I am what I am when it comes to endurance.